176. The Water has Passed but the Earth has Shifted

Natalie Davey on listening to Country

Welcome to a very special episode, months in the making. Natalie Davey was last on the podcast nearly 2 years ago. It’s still the sixth most popular episode. Natalie is a community leader from Fitzroy Crossing, with Bunuba-Walmajarri, English and Scottish heritage. She’s a Traditional Custodian of the magnificent Martuwarra Fitzroy River. She’s also a broadcaster with the local Wangki radio, an artist, educator, and former ranger. She was the first Indigenous Chair, too, of highly respected not-for-profit Environs Kimberley – until her life was turned upside down by the worst flood event in West Australian recorded history at the start of this year.

“There’s ways of things working together in parallel, not doing the assimilation thing, but like going you know how rich, if you’ve got all these different lines, all these different cultures or ideals, that you can just enrich so many different things. The fabric and things that you could weave, oh, my god, it would be amazing. ”

— Natalie Davey

Many will be familiar with the extraordinary unprecedented rainfall. But what you might not be familiar with is that while the water has passed, the earth has shifted. Figuratively, and literally. Some things that weren’t washed away, like the enormous Fitzroy Crossing bridge, were buried.

Coming into Fitzroy this time, we’d been wondering if there was a fuller story to tell. We found so much more than expected. Like what part our land management may have played in the damage. How community mobilised ahead of designated agencies in some crucial ways. The art and meaning that has flowed from disaster. How competing narratives confuse causes for solutions. And ultimately, how there are ways the community is responding successfully to not only the flood but, in related ways, to other issues like the youth crime waves that have been splashed across national media.

Head here for automatic cues to chapter markers (also available on the embedded player above), and a transcript of this conversation (please note the transcript is AI generated and imperfect, but hopefully serves to provide greater access to these conversations for those who need or like to read).

Recorded by the Martuwarra Fitzroy River on 8 August 2023.

Click on the photos below to zoom in, and hover over them to see captions where added (all photos by Anthony James unless noted).